I’ve gotta agree with you Nik. But I think we will have to wait until Ferrari and Mclaren put their first large updates on the car. If those updates do not make them more than a second quicker on quali pace… then the season will be over for sure.

I think you mean 2009. I think Vettel will do more than just a Button. Button slacked after the first 7 races of the season, and that gave the fans a glimmer of hope for a title fight. I just dont see Vettel losing his intensity and focus, or RB losing their advantage at any point of time during the season. I hate to say it, but 3 races down and this season looks over already.

We’re not even three races in. Way too early to judge how the season will pan out. At this point last year, if you include the 2010 Bahrain GP, you wouldn’t have been able to pick between Alonso, Button or Vettel. At this point in the season, Webber was actually in a worse position in the championship than he is now…a couple of races later he was a clear leader.

As we’ve seen in qualifying today, McLarens are a strong challenger to the Red Bulls at the moment and Renault have a car that is challenging for podiums. I don’t think it’ll be a predictable season at all.

It is kind of disappointing to know the winner before the race/Championship ends, but the objective everyone in F1 wants to reach is to win. Always win. Therefore Vettel and Newey deserve their success and have reached their objective. We can’t be upset with them, they have built a car 10 times better than the Ferrari, it’s not Ferrari that have built a car 10 times worse than the Red Bull. They have to improve, and then the fights will be close, but if Red Bull remain quickest they deserve to be such.

No I did mean 2001. Schumacher won 9 of 17 (i.e. someone else won almost as many times), but there was no single consistent challenger to him. 2009 would only apply if Red Bull suddenly went off the rails.

Of course, it could just turn out being 2002 and 2004 and no-one challenges!

Just because the championship might be a cakewalk it doesn’t mean the races will be less exciting. Even in the Schumi dominated years I enjoyed the races because i like seeing drivers battling whatever the position.

I’ll even enjoy watching Seb dominate it (if indeed he does, it’s still early and F1 is ‘if’ spelled backwards) because I like watching a driver who’s at one with the car and the team and drives beautifully.

As Superted says there are a couple of things that could stop Vettel, namely Ferrari or McLaren getting a decent upgrade or, God forbid, Vettel getting injured. I think their car is just about catch-able, McLaren have recovered from larger performance disadvantages in recent years (although admittedly they had fundamental issues with their car – as they did in testing this year).

As has been said a lot this year though, qualifying performance is less important than usual, and in race pace things are much more equal.